John Knox and the Reformation eBook

Knox himself actually wrote about 1547-48. Mr.
Hill Burton observes in the tract “the mark
of Knox’s vehement colouring,” and adds,
“it is needless to seek in the account for precise
accuracy.” In “precise accuracy”
many historians are as sadly to seek as Knox himself,
but his peculiar “colouring” is all his
own, and is as marked in the pamphlet on Wishart’s
trial, which he cites, as in the “History”
which he acknowledged.

There are said to be but few copies of the first edition
of the black letter tract on Wishart’s trial,
published in London, with Lindsay’s “Tragedy
of the Cardinal,” by Day and Seres. I regard
it as the earliest printed work of John Knox. {20}
The author, when he describes Lauder, Wishart’s
official accuser, as “a fed sow . . . his face
running down with sweat, and frothing at the mouth
like ane bear,” who “spat at Maister George’s
face, . . . " shows every mark of Knox’s vehement
and pictorial style. His editor, Laing, bids
us observe “that all these opprobrious terms
are copied from Foxe, or rather from the black letter
tract.” But the black letter tract, I conceive,
must be Knox’s own. Its author, like Knox,
“indulges his vein of humour” by speaking
of friars as “fiends”; like Knox he calls
Wishart “Maister George,” and “that
servand of God.”

The peculiarities of the tract, good and bad, the
vivid familiar manner, the vehemence, the pictorial
quality, the violent invective, are the notes of Knox’s
“History.” Already, by 1547, or not
much later, he was the perfect master of his style;
his tone no more resembles that of his contemporary
and fellow-historian, Lesley, than the style of Mr.
J. R. Green resembles that of Mr. S. R. Gardiner.

CHAPTER III: KNOX IN ST. ANDREWS CASTLE: THE GALLEYS: 1547-1549

We now take up Knox where we left him: namely
when Wishart was arrested in January 1546. He
was then tutor to the sons of the lairds of Langniddrie
and Ormiston, Protestants and of the English party.
Of his adventures we know nothing, till, on Beaton’s
murder (May 29, 1546), the Cardinal’s successor,
Archbishop Hamilton, drove him “from place to
place,” and, at Easter, 1547, he with his pupils
entered the Castle of St. Andrews, then held, with
some English aid, against the Regent Arran, by the
murderers of Beaton and their adherents. {22} Knox
was not present, of course, at Beaton’s murder,
about which he writes so “merrily,” in
his manner of mirth; nor at the events of Arran’s
siege of the castle, prior to April 1547. He
probably, as regards these matters, writes from recollection
of what Kirkcaldy of Grange, James Balfour, Balnaves,
and the other murderers or associates of the murderers
of the Cardinal told him in 1547, or later communicated
to him as he wrote, about 1565-66. With his
unfortunate love of imputing personal motives, he
attributes the attacks by the rulers on the murderers
mainly to the revengeful nature of Mary of Guise;
the Cardinal having been “the comfort to all
gentlewomen, and especially to wanton widows.
His death must be revenged.” {23a}